Arcs on Determinantal Varieties

We study arc spaces and jet schemes of generic determinantal varieties. Using the natural group action, we decompose the arc spaces into orbits, and analyze their structure. This allows us to compute the number of irreducible components of jet schemes, log canonical thresholds, and topological zeta functions.Comment: 27 pages. This is part of the author's PhD thesis at the University of Illinois at Chicago. v2: Minor changes. To appear in Transactions of the American Mathematical Societ

Fifth Annual Conference on New and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases

The fifth annual Conference on New and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases was hosted on April 18–19, 2002, by the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The conference featured 8 speakers and 35 poster presentations

MIDI-based music score editor

[Abstract] Music has always played a fundamental role in society. It is a basic human function and, as a consequence people have always found music significant whether it is for enjoyment in listening, its emotional response, performing or creating. Music is represented using music notation. Music notation is the transcription of music into music scores. Music scores have been a way of teaching and sharing music with others. In addition, it was a key contributor to evolving music language and allowing the works of composers to be preserved over time. The continuous advancements in technology have influenced both the creation and recording of music. One of the milestones for music creation and recording was Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI). MIDI is a protocol that provides a standardized and efficient means of conveying musical performance information as electronic data. Then, it is possible to obtain musical notation information by just processing the electronic data inside a MIDI file. The objective of this project is to develop and implement a MIDI based music score creator. Users will be able to load MIDI files, process them and generate the correspondent music score. To achieve this, a combination of musical knowledge and information obtained by the MIDI protocol will be used to create the accurate scores.[Resumo] A música sempre xogou un papel fundamental na sociedade. A música é unha función básica nos humanos e polo tanto, as música sempre foi importante para as persoas, xa fora para disfrutar escoitándoa, pola resposta emocional, para interpretala ou para creala. A música é representada pola notación musical. A notación musical consiste na transcipción de música en partituras. As partituras músicales sempre foron unha forma de enseñar e compartir música entre as persoas. Ademais, as partituras foron un contribuinte clave na evolución da linguaxe musical e permitiron preservar as obras creadas por diferentes compositores a través do tempo. Os avances continuos en tecnoloxía influenciaron tanto a creación como a grabación da música. Un dos hitos máis importantes para a creación e grabación de musica foi a creación de MIDI. O protocolo MIDI proporciona un medio estandarizado e eficiente para transmitir información musical como datos electrónicos. Polo tanto, é posible obtener información sobre notación musical simplemente procesando os datos electrónicos dentro dun archivo MIDI. O obxectivo deste proxecto e desarrollar e implementar un creador de partituras musicales baseado en MIDI. Os usuarios poderán cargar archivos MIDI, procesales e xerar a partitura correspondiente. Para logralo, utilizarase unha combination de conocimientos musicales e de información obtida polo protocolo MIDI para crear partituras precisas.Traballo fin de grao (UDC.FIC). Enxeñaría informática. Curso 2019/202

A Rival to the West? Comparing the Effects of Chinese and World Bank Health Aid on Health Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa

The international community has come to criticize existing foreign aid practices for their poor coordination, misguided programming, and ineffective implementation strategies. China’s controversial aid policies pose an alternative to dominant Western aid paradigms, as they thwart conventions of conditionality and good governance paramount to traditional donors. This thesis evaluates Chinese health aid as an alternative to Western health aid via the impacts of each on sub-Saharan African health capacity, commitment to health, and overall health outcomes. Results indicate that Chinese aid does not significantly impact health in sub-Saharan Africa, while World Bank aid displays strong significant relationships with improvements to government commitment to health and overall health outcomes

Theoretical and Computational Study of the Structure and Dynamics of Ionic Liquid Mixtures: Thermodynamical and Interfacial Properties

Ionic liquids (ILs) are nanostructured green solvents with very useful properties for a large number of applications, including synthesis and catalysis, electrochemistry, or energy storage. These properties are determined by the choice of anion and cation, and can be further fine-tuned for specific applications by means of mixing with molecular cosolvents or other ILs. This has resulted in them being known as "designer solvents." This thesis presents computer simulation studies, supplemented by experimental measurements, of mixtures of ILs with molecular cosolvents (water and alcohols) and other ILs, in order to understand their nanostructured mixing mechanisms in bulk mixtures and nanoconfined at the electrochemical interface